New Website!

Guys, I have something big to tell you...I have a brand new website!

It's great to have a bit of a fresh start for 2015, and this is something I've been thinking of doing for a while. I designed my old website myself and built it up from scratch, and don't get me wrong - I loved it - but I had a brief flash of realisation when I wanted to put new work on my website and had an overwhelming feeling of 'Urgghh...I can't be bothered! I'd rather be drawing!". My old website wasn't the easiest to update: I was using a coded slideshow and had to manually adjust the sizes of my illustrations and thumbnails before adding them in one by one. It wasn't horrendous, but definitely enough to keep it on your to do list for a few days too long.

With my new website I'm using Behance Prosite as a base with some custom coding here and there to make it a little more personal. The main clincher for me is that I can upload my work to Behance (which I've been getting into recently!) and push those projects straight to my website - a million times quicker and easier than I was dealing with before. This means a lot more new work, up to date portfolio and the ability to include a few more illustrations, photos and details in each project.

Social media is far more integrated with this new format, with options to share each illustration on every project page. I think that was really lacking from my other websites, and being such a social media butterfly myself - I think it's a really important way to raise your profile. There are a few things that I would have liked to carry over from my old website style, but honestly the benefits far outweigh the negatives and I'm excited to share my work in this new way.  

I've stripped down my portfolio a little, added a few never-before-seen projects and I'll be rearranging it over the coming weeks; but I do love that you get an instant hit of my style, which should hopefully appease those oh-so-impatient internet goers who give a website a second or two to impress. The internet is a harsh place, and you need to make a solid impact as quickly as possible - so sometimes slideshows can only really hold the attention of the very patient, and we all know how busy clients, agents and art directors can be.

I've included a new tab on the navigation which leads to my freelance advice articles on Medium, definitely something I'm going to be beefing up over the next year, so keep an eye out for those!

I do have to say that it's a real shame that Behance Prosite isn't responsive (how?! It's 2015!), and that's been one of the first things that people have commented on when I've promoted the new site. If I was more confident with coding I would definitely attempt to wrangle some responsiveness in there, but I'm more of a code editor than a start-from-scratch-er, and I'm very concious of breaking it. Behance have been saying for years that an update is just around the corner, and I seriously hope it is - come on guys!

So if you've read this far, you're probably one of those more patient interneters I just mentioned - so if you could take the time to have a little look through the new site, and let me know what you think, I'd really appreciate it. Hopefully everyone feels as excited about it as I do!